Jan. 17, 2013

Edmonds Elementary 1st grader Samuel Jedo receives his bag of food to take home for the weekend. / Rodney White/The Register

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Iowa’s governor announced some inspiring goals for the state for this year: creating jobs, building world-class schools and making Iowa one of the healthiest states. But to turn those into reality, leaders will need to take a more expansive view of the state’s role than being primarily a booster and patron of private industry.

They will also have to go deeper to address what stands in the way of learning and health beyond bad teachers and bad food choices.

Poverty, for one, threatens both. Yet Gov. Terry Branstad has rejected simple measures to help low-income families compensate for that. He is refusing to expand the state’s Med­icaid program to cover the additional 150,000 people that would be eligible for it. He has twice vetoed lawmakers’ efforts to raise the Earned Income Tax Credit for families earning below-poverty wages, though Iowa is one of only a few states in which they must pay income taxes.

And last year, after a bipartisan majority of legislators approved a $500,000 appropriation for the food banks of Iowa, which supply food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters, Branstad vetoed that, too.

He urges people to take ownership of their health through exercise and diet, which are certainly important. But when nearly 13 percent of Iowans can’t afford the food they need, and one in five children isn’t getting enough to eat at home, there are limits to how far personal responsibility can go. Of the 382,000 food insecure Iowans, 42 percent are not eligible for government help.

Branstad said he vetoed aid to the food banks, though he supports them personally, “because it is not a good public policy to make food banks dependent on government.”

But where does he draw the line on public aid to private entities? Why does the World Food Prize, which honors global leaders for advances in food production, get support from Iowa taxpayers when an agency that actually supplies food to hungry Iowans does not?

I asked Branstad that Tuesday. He said the World Food Prize is an internationally recognized Iowa initiative, and the state’s return on its investment is many times what it spends. The point here is not necessarily to discredit the $850,000 a year Iowa taxpayers spend on the tax-exempt foundation. It is to suggest that a modest expenditure to quell hunger in Iowa could also return dividends in the health and education of children.

In addition to stocking the shelves of food distribution sites, the food banks supply 2,400 low-income Iowa children each Friday with nutritious food to fill a backpack for the weekend. That’s to make up for the fact that they won’t be getting the free and reduced-price meals they have at school.

The backpack program was begun in Little Rock, Ark., by a school nurse who saw children with headaches, stomachaches and dizziness and realized they were not ill but hungry. After those children began getting the backpacks filled with food, the school saw rapid improvement in grades and enthusiasm among those children. Since then, the program spread throughout the country.

That story was told recently in a paper presented at the Proteus Club, a monthly Des Moines lunch and discussion group that has a number of well-placed women as members. “These kids sometimes end up having lifelong problems,” said presenter Mary Susan Gibson, who said she followed the topic for over a year. “They cannot concentrate. Some have trouble socializing. Some don’t finish school.”

Gibson said club members were very concerned to hear of Branstad’s veto, and some have wondered how to persuade the Legislature to bring it up again and override another veto.

Food banks in 38 states do get state support, but last year was the first time the Iowa Food Bank Association asked, according to Cory Berkenes, its state director. He noted both increased demand and diminished USDA commodity surplus foods.

Branstad’s approach to most things, including job creation, is to cut taxes and scale back regulations on businesses. One of his priorities for making Iowa a healthier state is to discourage medical malpractice lawsuits against doctors. But even some Republicans who subscribe to a trickle-down theory of economics, as Branstad does, understand the need for balancing priorities where the public welfare is at stake. If the state doesn’t provide meaningful relief from poverty, it will just further an educational and health caste system.

“When did we decide that middle of the pack was good enough when it came to our children’s education?” the governor asked poignantly in Tuesday’s Condition of the State speech. “Did we really make that decision or did we simply allow it to happen through inaction?”

Unless the state’s leadership steps up and directly addresses the day-to-day needs of struggling Iowans, that question may someday be asked of him.